Health
Health contractor tried to block report of abuse
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Published: February 21, 2012
CLEARWATER - A drug counselor defied boss to notify the state of alleged abuse concerning the child of a woman, but was told only mother was their client not the child.
A mental health contractor that relies on tax dollars tried to dissuade an employee from calling the state's abuse hotline about her suspicion that a patient's 6-year-old daughter had been sexually abused.
The child should never have been her concern, Operation PAR told drug counselor Rebecca Hunt in an email.
A report from the state inspector general later determined Hunt did the right thing when she made the call anyway, saying she was bound by state law – as are all Florida health-care professionals – to call the abuse hotline. Failure to do so is a felony.
But that's not how Operation PAR saw it last June when Hunt went to her supervisors with her concerns.
"A handful of counselors can never wrap their brains around the idea: the mother is our patient. The child is not," Stephanie Luciano, regional administrator with Operation PAR, told Hunt in a two-page email. "The mother can report the alleged abuse if she chooses – that is her choice."
Luciano ended the email with a curt directive: "There is not duty to report as I have explained ad nauseum by now. …"
Hunt was placed on probation for 90 days and threatened with termination – not for contacting the hotline, but for taking home confidential patient records before she made the call, according to Operation PAR records.
Hunt told News Channel 8 she still believes that making the call was the real reason she was punished. She said the only record she took home was a Post-it note where she had written the name, address and phone number of the patient.
The inspector general's report, triggered by a complaint from Hunt, took six months to complete and found a potential violation of Florida's mandatory reporting law. The state is not pursuing criminal charges.
Operation PAR said Luciano was "counseled" about her bad advice. Employees, including Hunt, underwent training on their legal responsibility as mandatory reporters of abuse.
Citing privacy laws, Operation PAR, the state and Hunt declined to comment on whether Hunt's suspicions of child abuse were ever confirmed or what became of the child.
Hunt quit her job last month.
It all started when a methadone patient, her daughter in tow, came to Operation PAR's Port Richey office on June 13 for a drug counseling session.
The patient told Hunt she suspected a "family member's significant other" had abused the girl a few weeks earlier while the patient was in the hospital having a baby, according to an email Hunt sent Luciano later.
"As soon as the mom had mentioned the sexual abuse, the daughter had covered her ears and appeared fearful, in my opinion," Hunt told News Channel 8.
Hunt turned to the girl and asked if she understood what the mother was talking about.
"I said, 'Do you think you could talk to some nice counselor like me or maybe like a police officer,' and she said yes," Hunt said.
Hunt said the mother was reluctant to report abuse to the authorities because she was on probation and feared she would land in more trouble for allowing it to happen.
Hunt said one thought raced through her mind: "Oh my goodness, this child needs to be protected and I need to figure out as many details as I can, so I can report it to the right people if she's not going to."
Hunt said she spoke with co-workers that day, and reached out the next day to Tom Sheehan, Operation PAR's methadone program manager.
Sheehan saw no "immediate" need to call the hotline, he later told the inspector general's office. His reasoning: Hunt's information was not specific, the girl was not a PAR client, and Hunt lacked experience interviewing sex abuse victims.
Said Hunt, "I felt I was morally obligated and I had a duty to report this and he disagreed."
Sheehan directed Hunt to Luciano, the regional administrator, and Hunt sent her an email.
In two email replies and a phone call, Luciano, too, tried to dissuade Hunt from making a report.
Hunt was not convinced. She scribbled the patient's contact information on the Post-it note and decided to talk to an attorney. The attorney, she said, advised her she was obligated to make a report.
In addition, Hunt said, Operation PAR's own handbook – which employees must sign – required her to do so. She pointed to Page 5: "I understand that the program is required by law to report to the proper authorities any abuse or neglect incident that I may disclose to staff."
"I knew it from their training and from their policies and procedures," Hunt said. "This was in their own manuals."
The evening after the counseling session, having consulted a half-dozen people, Hunt came home from work and called the hotline, at (800) 962-2873.
Within the hour, Hunt said, she received a call back from a child-abuse investigator who thanked her and said concerns had been raised about her patient on another matter.
Two weeks later, however, her supervisors at Operation PAR put Hunt on probation for taking home the records.
In a separate employee counseling notice, PAR's office director Dana Selfridge wrote that Hunt acted "outside the scope of practice" in her role as the mother's methadone counselor when she asked the child about the abuse.
Two days later, on June 30, Hunt contacted the Office of Inspector General. On July 18, based on information she provided, the office opened an investigation. The office issued its final report Dec. .
Operation PAR violated its taxpayer-funded contract to provide drug treatment and potentially violated Florida's mandatory reporting law, the report found. The state Department of Children and Families said no crime was committed because Hunt defied her bosses and reported the abuse allegation within 24 hours.
Investigators were more reserved about the managers involved.
"There was not a malicious intent by Ms. Luciano to circumvent the mandatory reporting requirements to the hotline, because Luciano believed the child was no longer at risk of abuse," the report says.
A DCF spokeswoman said Operation PAR had an internal policy requiring supervisors to review abuse allegations before they were reported to the hotline. That policy has been amended.
Operation PAR declined requests for an interview with Luciano, Sheehan or anyone else with the organization.
Founded in Pinellas County in 1970, Operation PAR – a private nonprofit – has 425 employees providing addiction and mental health services in Broward, Pinellas, Pasco, Lee and Manatee counties.
Spokesman Marvin Coleman said in an email statement that Operation PAR has taken steps deemed satisfactory by the inspector general's office, the Florida Division of Child and Family Services and the Central Florida Behavior Network, which will direct more than $7 million in state funding to PAR this year for drug treatment.
"Operation PAR takes this matter very seriously and has as strict policy of reporting incidents of child abuse," Coleman said in the statement.
David Wilkins, chief of the Division of Child and Family Services, oversees child abuse prevention efforts in the state and his agency contracts with the Central Florida Behavior Network.
In a recent visit to Tampa, Wilkins praised Operation PAR's drug treatment work but didn't defend its actions in the wake of the child abuse concerns raised by Hunt.
"We learn that in grade school," Wilkins said. "We learn it in college about ethics and responsibilities to always do the right thing."
He said there's no gray area for PAR or any other health-care provider.
"That's what mandatory means," he said. "They have that responsibility to report and we expect them to do that."
Child advocate Lauren Book, who survived child abuse and is walking the state to raise awareness about the problem, said Hunt's case points up a reluctance to report.
"That's the type of thing we're working to change," Book said. "We need to make it clear that everyone's a mandatory reporter and they must do so."
Book plans to lobby state lawmakers to remove loopholes from the reporting law.
"It needs to be immediate," said Book. "If you suspect something is going on you need to report it."
Hunt said no one at Operation PAR has apologized to her – even after the inspector general's report vindicated her. She quit her job there in late January and returned to school to pursue studies in mental health counseling.
Hunt still wonders how many cases of abuse go unreported by people who should know better
"I was protecting the life of a child. I would like to be certain that another kid is not going to be at risk from this faulty thinking."
mdouglas@wfla.com (727) 709-2753
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